the lives of teachers

As mobile learning takes off, it’s inevitable that the big publishers are going to want in on the act. The question is, will they do a good job? Oxford University Press have started fairly gently by adapting existing print products for the iTunes store, and have very kindly gifted me a number of iPad apps for review. In today’s post I would like to focus on their dictionary apps.

The first is the Oxford Advanced Learners dictionary, (ALD) which I suppose we ought to look at as both a dictionary and as an app. As a dictionary, I like it – the definitions are clear and there are plenty of authentic (at least, they look authentic) example sentences. Words are also marked with symbols to indicate their ‘importance’ – a key shows that the word is within the Oxford 3000, and AWL indicates that the word is on the Academic Wordlist. Both lists are based partly or solely on corpora, and are worth taking the time to explain to students as part of dictionary training.

As an app it has strengths and weaknesses. The best way to look at it, I think, is in comparison with two other dictionaries I frequently use. One is the combined Deluxe Oxford Dictionary of English and Oxford Thesaurus of English which I bought for myself some time ago. At nearly forty quid, It’s not cheap by any means, but I find it pretty handy – especially when I sit down with my Guardian crossword. The other is a Japanese / English dictionary called Midori which I use as a learner of Japanese. Let’s look at the features in comparison.

Sound

Midori has none. The deluxe plays words in isolation, but the ALD wins here with it’s bank of audio example sentences. This can be downloaded for use off line, or not, depending on your memory space, at no extra cost. Both American and British banks are available.

Lists and Folders

One of the problems I have with dictionaries (as both a teacher and a learner) is that it’s very easy to look up a word, use it, and instantly forget it. These apps all allow book marking for later review with varying degrees of success. In the ALD, users can save words to a list, but that’s all. If you are good at reviewing at the end of the day, and transferring such information to organised notebooks or flashcards, then great, but otherwise it’s not especially helpful. The Deluxe is more useful, in that it allows the user to create and save words to certain folders. This way a user can organise lists to review in their own way… and as a teacher I can create lists to pull up in particular classes if I anticipate vocabulary ahead of time. Best of all though, by a clear margin, is the Midori app. Users can create their own folders, and the app will take your saved lists and turn them instantly into two sided flashcards. It also has a number of ready made lists, including sets of characters learnt by pupils in each year of elementary school, and sets for each level of the internationally recognised Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Perhaps this is not a like for like comparison – translating dictionaries and monolingual dictionaries are not really the same thing. Nonetheless, I feel that an app should offer something which its paper equivalent can’t apart from portability and novelty.

Navigation

All three dictionaries have a ‘jump’ function, enabling the user to press a word or character within a definition and leap on to the entry for that word.  The Deluxe lets readers switch between the thesaurus and dictionary for the same word.  All three dictionaries will also automatically save your history, so if you know you checked a word yesterday you can pop back and find it again. As well as keyboard entry, you can look up words on Midori by using your finger or a stylus to write characters directly onto the screen. Japanese lends itself to such input methods, of course, but it might be a useful feature for students who want to check their handwriting in English!

Other Settings

Midori is plain black and white with a hint of red. But the OUP apps are far more customisable in terms of style, font sizes and colours. The ALD can also be adapted to show or hide certain aspects of definitions.

If you are looking for an English dictionary (and I think it’s a pretty important tool for a teacher) then I would certainly recommend both the OUP offerings. The features they have are generally well done and, compared to the cost of an electronic dictionary,  these are very portable and user-friendly. Both are compatible with iTouch, iPhone and iPad.

However, this is a hard review to write, as I realise my criticisms are not about what the apps do badly; rather, what they might possibly do but don’t. The best app developers are fully exploring the opportunities mobile learning affords. Features like jump navigation and audio examples are great compared to paper dictionaries, but nothing new to my Japanese learners used to electronic dictionaries. Whilst the OUP dictionaries are very nice looking, easy to use, and functional, neither will change the way you learn. A dictionary like Midori, on the other hand, might. A dictionary with the best features of all of them would absolutely blow your socks off!

It’s that time again…. a couple of quick ones in time for Jason Renshaw’s Hallowe’en Lesson Plan Challenge.

The first worksheet is a set of questions to get them in the mood – there are four different question sheets with spaces to add extra questions. Students can circulate and make notes, then report back to their original team (language practice – reported speech “Tomomi told me that…” / most of / the majority of / almost everyone said that…). I have a stable pdf version, but if you’d like to play around with it there is a word version too.

Next is a pair of urban legend readings. You can cut them up and have groups of students work together to put one of them in order (good for noticing structures and organisation). Then students can tell one another the story they completed.

truck driver hallowe’en story (pdf)

university students hallowe’en story (pdf)

If you want to add local place names and personal touches to give the students an extra chill, you can use these word versions.

Trucker

Uni Students

Finally, I have written before about the Kuchisake-onna, one of my favourite urban legends. Students can read about her, and her little sister Toire no Hanako, in these two short passages…

kuchisake onna and toire no hanako.

However, after the readings A and B put their papers aside and compare information. Can they find the nine differences?

Happy Haunting……

With only three weeks to go, the excitement is rising for the Realizing Autonomy conference to be held at Nanzan University in Nagoya on October 29th. The website for the conference (and the accompanying book) is constantly evolving, so keep your eyes on it. Part of the reason I am writing here today is to ask for your help, so if you can do any of the following, please chip in! You can contact me directly at darrenrelliott@gmail.com, or drop comments in the appropriate comment boxes online. Cheers!

Photography

We are looking for someone with a knack and a camera to capture the event, and if you can commit we are willing to waive your conference fee.

Video Experts

If anyone is prepared to record and edit some of the sessions to upload to our website, we would do the same.

Must-see Nagoya

I love this place, and I want the out-of-towners coming in to go away with a great impression of Japan’s third city. There will be a plenty making a weekend of it, so what do you recommend? If you have any good ideas for things to eat and drink, places to visit in town, or short trips around the area, please click on the links and deposit your knowledge on the official conference website.

Party!

The social is already fully subscribed, and we are thinking about the entertainment. Our venue is equipped with an array of multi-media facilities (karaoke, anyone?) and we are considering various ideas. If you want to volunteer for a Pecha Kucha, we would love to hear from you! Other suggestions are also very welcome.

Publicity

We are already expecting a great turnout, but just in case anyone hasn’t heard about the conference, you can print out the posters and flyers and spread the word.

The Day Itself

The schedule is now available on the website, and we hope to get a pdf version of the conference booklet posted in advance of the conference. Unfortunately, Richard Pemberton is unable to fly at the moment, but he will join us via the magic of technology and team up with Mike Nix to give us something very special. Tim Murphey will be start off the day in his usual energizing style, and we will welcome a host of other guests, speakers and presenters.

Thanks for your indulgence, everyone! Looking forward to seeing you all soon!

I’ve had my new toy for a couple of months now, enough time to play around with it in various teaching contexts, on a few long and short trips, and in two different countries. I say toy because, if I’m honest, that is mainly what it is – I mean, it’s a luxury item, something I wanted rather than needed, and something which makes my life more fun rather than better. Nonetheless I have found myself doing a lot with it, and with certain reservations I would recommend it.

Which Model?

Mine is wi-fi only, and 64GB memory. My university campus doesn’t have wi-fi, so it means I have to be a little better prepared for class – not that I was unprepared before, but I had greater flexibility with a laptop plugged in via an ethernet cable. I miss not being able to call up youtube videos, google images and the like on the spur of the moment. On the other hand, I don’t miss carrying my MacBook Pro up a very steep hill every morning.

In the UK, wireless coverage is far more widespread – you can check up in pretty much any cafe or pub. For Japan, I may pick up one of these mobile routers – very cheap minimum monthly plan, but handy for emergencies.

I can live without the 3G, but I am glad I got the largest memory available. I have a lot of audio and video, as well as quite a few books, and it’s nice not to have to keep deleting and re-synching.

Classroom Apps and Applications

The main reason I held off on the first model is that it didn’t have video mirroring, which the iPad 2 does. That means that whatever is on the screen of the device can be beamed through a projector or shown through a TV, with the right adaptor cables. This is great for showing video clips in class – I use handbrake to rip my own dvd’s onto my mac, and it is also handy for converting other files sourced from the internet. From the laptop, I can easily synch them onto the iPad. One video app which has a lot of potential is the TED＋SUB application. Many of the subtitled videos are available to be saved and played offline, too. I have also loaded up all my class cd’s – one less thing to forget when scrabbling around before a lesson, and also easier to use in mp3 format with a touch-slider control.

The first essential app is Keynote. You may have used the desktop software in presentations or class before, but I really love the way it is set up in the iPad version. It’s so easy to create nice looking slideshows, with animations, audio/visual inserts, or different design features. I like it because it allows me to pace the class according to the mood. Rather than writing three discussion questions on the board, for example, I can put each one on a slide and reveal them one at a time. The same goes for new vocabulary, or images, or example sentences, or whatever it is you want to show. It saves paper, and looks neater than my scruffy handwriting. One drawback is that I haven’t figured out a way to save the files into folders on the device itself yet, although they are so quick and easy to knock up that I’ll probably just delete them and remake them as necessary. Those that are worth saving can be exported in several formats and saved externally, them synched back onto the device in the future.

The two other apps I have used the most so far in class are both dictionary apps. The first is the Oxford Deluxe Dictionary and Thesaurus, very expensive for an app, but for an English teacher probably worth it. I’ve found it very useful as a dictionary training tool, for pointing out differences in usage, and for demonstrating pronunciation (with the audio). The other dictionary is Midori, a very effective Japanese / English (and back again) translating dictionary. Lower level classes in particular tend to rely on their translating dictionaries, (although I try to encourage and support other methods) and it helps me to make sure that they are saying what they want to say. As an aside, it’s great for my personal study. I can input Japanese via the keyboard or with a stylus directly onto the touch pad – so I can even look up complex Chinese characters.

One more reference tool which has come in handy is All of Wikipedia, as you can imagine it’s a huge file but when I am offline it can be handy for checking up on random ideas or questions which come up in class. A very useful tool for a wi-fi only, 64GB iPad 2. If you have wireless access, Qwiki presents information via audio, text and pictures. It also detects your location to offer you encyclopedia entries which may be of particular interest, although to be honest the best use in class might be spotting the inaccuracies! I am still tinkering with maps, but World Travel Atlas seems to be the best so far.

With only one iPad for a class of twenty to thirty, and no wi-fi, there have been no fundamental changes to the way I teach. If I had several iPads and wireless classrooms… now THAT would be something! Imagine students video recording each other and uploading the videos to a class blog, solving puzzles, doing research together….

I have been teaching a professional couple, informally, on-and-off, for several years. In the past, I used a notepad with a piece of carbon paper in a ‘dogme’ style lesson – I noted the ‘emergent language’, we worked on whatever we needed to work on, and at the end of the class I gave them the top sheet and kept the carbon copy myself. However, they are very tech savvy people, now each with an iPad! I am set up on the wi-fi in their house and we are figuring out together some of the things we can do. One app they put me on to is Note Taker HD. Using a stylus, we can write directly onto the screen, insert images or links, save as a pdf and share on dropbox or via email. Another which could be fun is Dragon Dictation, a very clever (and free!) app which transcribes whatever you say (as long as you are wi-fi connected). It could work for presentation or pronunciation practice very well.

Finally, GoodReader is another essential app. It’s a pdf reader which I’ll talk about it more in part two of this review, but in class I have used the highlighting and annotation functions on conversation transcripts, to show particular features of conversational English. It works well in conjunction with audio downloaded from elllo, an excellent free resource in its own right.

I am still exploring the possibilities for classroom use, but I can say that the device itself has a fundamentally different feel to using a laptop or desktop. By removing the keyboard and mouse and interacting more directly with the screen, it feels far more intuitive and responsive… there seems to be one less layer of mediation between what you want to do and what the computer does. Because of that speed, flipping between a video and a text document, then zooming on to a thesaurus page feels far more natural and the flow of the class is less likely to be interrupted.

In part two of the review I’ll talk more about the out-of-class applications, for research, for admin (and for fun!). Until then, I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing with your new toy!

Just searching through my inbox, it was way back in November 2008 that I received the call for papers sent to all members of the Learner Development SIG of JALT (The Japan Association for Language Teachers). They had just gotten the go ahead to put together another book in their series of edited collections, and were looking for chapters from the membership and beyond. Back in my student days, long before I was a JALT member, I had ordered their previous publications from the UK and enjoyed both immensely, so I thought it would be great to get involved.

(Aside – There are still a few copies left of ‘Autonomy you Ask’ and ‘More Autonomy you Ask’, and if you ask nicely you may be able to get hold of a copy. I think they are both excellent. I reviewed MAYA for ‘Independence’, the IATEFL Learner Autonomy SIG)

So I put together some ideas and sent off my proposal, started working on the paper and developing it as a chapter. Something I had especially liked about the previous books was that each chapter had attached critical reflections written by reviewers, and other authors – it was an unusual idea, but I liked how it brought together the book as a whole, and showed the spirit of autonomy as collaborative. This project was to be no different, and in July of 2009 we gathered at a writers’ retreat in Tokyo, sharing our papers, talking through the section headings, book title , cover art and so on.

Alison Stewart and Kay Irie, our two editors, have been excellent all along and guiding the process firmly but democratically.

It was very exciting when we heard that Palgrave Macmillan were interested in publishing the book, and also that Richard Smith & Naoko Aoki would be able to write an introduction and Scott Thornbury would contribute a concluding chapter. The book is due early December, and most of the royalties will go to The Shanti Volunteer Association.

At the November 2010 JALT national conference I first heard the idea of a book launch conference mooted. Naively, I asked why such conferences were so often held in Tokyo or Osaka… which is how I fell into organising the Realizing Autonomy Conference at Nanzan University in Nagoya for October 29th 2011.

The call for papers is still operative, so you have a couple of weeks to get your ideas to us. If you can’t present, then we would still love to have you. You can see plenary speakers Tim Murphey from Kanda University of International Studis, and  Richard Pemberton from the University of Nottingham. You can see poster presentations from the book chapter authors, and get a first look at the book itself. We are also planning a party for the evening which should be a lot of fun, so if you can’t make it to the conference, then join us all for drinks and nibbles. Visit the conference website to submit an abstract, to print off flyers and publicity posters, to register, and to find out more. We will have some exclusive content on the site in the coming months, too, so keep your eyes peeled to see how it evolves.

Although I earn my money up at the university, my main job these days seems to be teaching of young learners. Two of them, boys, aged two and four. I’ve started sitting down with Ibuki everyday for ten or twenty minutes to do our ‘letters’, and both boys love being read to, but I wanted to try something a bit different for fun. So here is the first part of our family alphabet…. twenty one more letters to follow.

Step by Step

Find words for each letter of the alphabet. The boys need help with this, but older children should be able to do it. I asked them what they liked, what they play with, what they could see around the house and so on to prompt them.

It is preferable, I think, if you can keep some consistency with phonics…especially in the early stages of trying to read. But on the other hand I wanted to use words which they know and which have some meaning for them. With this in mind I was able to substitute giraffe (Satsuki’s favourite animal) for Gorillaz (Satsuki’s favourite band), but I stuck with ‘Ice Cream’ over ‘Ink’ or ‘Igloo’ just because it has more relevance for them.

I used an Edirol R-09HR digital voice recorder for the sounds, and a lo-fi video camera called a Digital Harinezumi (get one now if you can, because they will go out of production soon) for the visuals, but that’s just because I like the effects and I like playing with video. Once I had enough audio, I clipped together the parts I needed in Garageband, then trimmed the video to fit the length and edited them together in iMovie. I added the text at that stage too. I did one letter at a time, then stitched them all together and added a drum loop from Garageband to top it off. However, you could do something similar in far less time if you use a video camera with a built-in audio channel.

Applications

1. A class alphabet. You should check, but here in Japan I think just about every family has access to rudimentary video equipment, be it a mobile phone, smartphone, a feature of a point-and-shoot digital camera, or a full-on camcorder. If you are confident that your young learners have access to the technology, get the parents involved too. Give each student a letter or two for homework, and have them record a segment and email it in to you. You can quickly stitch them together for everyone to enjoy.
2. If you have flip video cameras or the equivalent, and your young learners are old enough, you could do the same thing in class time. Send each team out with a camera and have them look for a complete alphabet around the school. (You might want to plant a few items in preparation). If they do it sequentially, there is no editing required.
3. Other learners might benefit from recording lexical sets. Concrete nouns are obviously easier, but cataloguing abstract nouns, adjectives and verbs will force students to be creative.
4. Check out Barbara Sakamoto’s great use of voicethread to make class alphabet book online.

I haven’t read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, but I have heard enough about it to feel as if I have. The handy little factoid that is most quoted is the 10,000 hours rule; basically, that it takes 10,000 hours of hard practice to master achieve mastery of one’s given discipline.  What constitutes mastery, or practice for that matter, is the kind of significant detail which gets lost as original research is interpreted by popular science, and re-interpreted by the people who read popular science, and re-reinterpreted by the people who read the tweets of the people who read popular science. That’s where I come in.

Whether it’s a figure that stands up to scrutiny or not, it feels right. It’s a round number, for a start. It’s impressively big, too, but not unachievable. Worth checking to see if I qualify, I thought. It turns out, I’m some way short of being an expert. In the twelve years since I started teaching, according to my back-of-a-fag-packet calculations I have spent about 6,000 hours in the classroom. At current rates, I should become an expert sometime in 2017. Can’t wait.

One of the reasons I have been rather quiet on the blogging and tweeting front of late relates to this lack of expertise. This isn’t false modesty, and I am not fishing for compliments. I think fundamentally I can be a good teacher, and I have pieces of paper to prove it from people who have actually seen me teach

But I think for me at the moment I need to spend less time talking to others and more time talking to myself. That’s why I’ve started writing a teaching journal again – actually seven of them, one fat, lined paper notebook for each class of students I currently teach. Before class, I write my lesson plans, what I’ll need, some rough timings. During class I write notes to myself, about who is quiet, who needs a poke, who needs an arm around the shoulder and about what is working and why. And after class I paste in scraps of worksheets, draw diagrams of the state of the whiteboard, and scribble critiques . It’s something I haven’t done for a long time, but it has reminded me of what a technologically mediated PLN can’t do.  

1. It isn’t a place to be truly honest. Even now, I am selecting my words carefully, but sometimes I just want to complain about something. Constructive? No. Mature? Not really. But everyone has to let off steam from time to time. Of course, you can’t do that online. Because it’s forever, and you will probably get sacked. Whereas if I want to go off on a vitriolic rant in my journal, no harm done.
2. It isn’t a place to discuss the minutiae of your own classroom experience. For one thing, everyone would get bored. Even if they don’t, discussion quickly moves from the local to the global, from the specific to the general. This cross-pollination of ideas is very healthy, and I am glad to learn from teachers in different contexts. But at 9:20, I am the one who has to walk into that classroom alone, and I am the only one (along with the students) who can figure out how to make it work.
3. It doesn’t promote reflection. Too  much information, no time to think about it. “Hmmm… I wonder what I should do about.. Oh look! Another tweet!”

So this is the step back I have taken. A step back to written lesson plans, to the nuts and bolts of a lesson, to exactly how I should set up a listening exercise, and all the other mundane stuff which a real expert teacher needs to know. With a bit of an effort, I might even make it before 2017.

I am very happy to have taken up a position as book reviews editor for a new online, open-access journal based in the UK, The Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research. The first issue should be out shortly, with three excellent book review contributions sourced from my personal learning network.

Part of the remit of the journal is to offer researchers who are newer to the field an opportunity to get their work published. I will be happy to take you through writing process on early drafts of your review, so this might be a chance to get some writing on your CV. I started writing book reviews myself after I finished my MA, as a way to continue reading critically and keep up with current theory, and I really think it’s a valuable exercise.

If you are interested, I have three books at them moment which I would like to place with reviewers. Click on the links to read more about them.

Sociocultural Theory in Second Language Education
An Introduction through Narratives
Merrill Swain, Penny Kinnear, Linda Steinman

English Language Education Across Greater China
Anwei Feng

Code Choice in the Language Classroom
Glenn S. Levine

Contact me via darrenrelliott@gmail.com (or twitter or facebook) and I can get a book sent directly to you from the publishers – free, of course! If you have another recently published book in mind, I am happy to take suggestions… just let me know.

Cheers!

I am working on some short videos or animations to show language learners how to do basic presentations. At the moment, I am focusing on common problems my students have had in the past and I used these tips as a kind of jigsaw reading today. What do you think? Anything to add, or take out? Feedback welcome!

Using Notes
A presentation is not the same as reading an essay aloud. However, you shouldn’t have to memorize every word. Try to use a cue card to help you hit the key points.

Research
Try to use a variety of sources, online and printed if possible, and don’t use anything if you don’t know who wrote it. Cite your sources in your presentation (on your slides and in handouts) and if necessary explain why your sources are valid.

According to…
Dr. Peter Smith from the University of Northville claims that…

Timing
Remember that there are probably other people waiting to present after you, so don’t go too long. You should rehearse to check the timing before the presentation, and make sure that you leave time for questions. Some people speak faster when they are nervous, so try to relax.
.
Organization
You need an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Use appropriate signposting language to help the audience see where you are going.

Let’s start by thinking about….
Now I’d like to talk about…
To sum up….
Thank you for listening. Now we have time for a few questions…

Voice
Don’t mumble, and don’t speak in a monotone. Your voice modulation is important for two reasons. Firstly, it doesn’t matter how exciting your words are…if your voice is flat, everyone will fall asleep. Secondly, we need to emphasize certain words to make the meaning clear. Think about the differences in meaning between these three sentences.

I wanted you to buy me a dozen red roses.
I wanted you to buy me a dozen red roses.
I wanted you to buy me a dozen red roses.

Visuals
They should be big enough to see, and used well. Don’t turn your back to the audience to point at them. If you are using presentation software, make sure that the visuals fit the content. For example, ‘fun’ animations are not appropriate if you are making a presentation about child poverty.

Language
One mistake presenters often make is to forget their audience. You must make sure that the audience understands what you are talking about. If you use complex language or technical jargon, make sure you ‘gloss’ it. That means, you should explain it in simpler terms. You can use pictures or examples to make things clearer. Think about this – if you had to check a word in a dictionary to put it into your presentation, your audience will need a dictionary to understand your presentation!

Posture and Body Language
Sit or stand with a straight back! No one wants to see someone slouch their way through a presentation. Good posture makes you look more confident and more professional, and your audience will be more inclined to listen to you.

I took this photo last week, as I do every year. I’m not a nature photographer, and I though I love living here I wouldn’t call myself a Japanophile, but there is something about an early blossoming sakura tree….

The hanami celebrations have been muted this year, and many people in Northern Japan will be making fresh starts in ways they had never imagined. If you want to help them, please start here – I recommend HOPE international as a Nagoya based group who have been doing sterling work collecting truckloads of stuff every day at the Hilton Hotel in Fushimi and taking it up to people who need it.

I was planning to write a post about first lessons, and the activities you do, and breaking the ice, and all that…. but it seems a bit frivolous. So, as the students return to classes, or start their university lives, what will we do in those first classes? Business as usual, or a fresh start?